The cloud is powerful and has a plethora of features to use. No matter if you’re all-in on the cloud, have a hybrid, or multi-cloud strategy, without proper management, your cloud environment is susceptible to security threats, data loss, downtime, and performance issues. What are cloud managed services and how can they help your organization avoid those ongoing security and performance related issues?
What are Cloud Managed Services?
Cloud managed services revolves around the engagement of a third-party technical services provider by an organization to manage a cloud environment on the organization’s behalf. By partnering with an expert technical firm, your organization can automate and enhance support of your environment, leaving your internal IT department free to work on more strategic initiatives.
In addition, internal IT departments don’t always have the right skills or expertise to maintain a cloud environment. For this reason, it is often more cost-effective and prudent to engage a third-party cloud managed services provider.
What’s Included in Cloud Managed Services?
Besides basic maintenance tasks, many cloud managed services providers include 24/7/365 monitoring, reporting, performance testing, backup and disaster recovery, alongside their typical services. Usually, all of this fits under an umbrella of fixed monthly pricing, making cloud managed services less expensive than an in-house team for many organizations.
Benefits of Cloud Managed Services
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Affordability and Cost-Effectiveness
With a subscription-based billing model, cloud managed services provide predictable, recurring monthly expenses, and are usually more cost-effective than hiring a full-time team with the same expertise. Cloud managed service providers can also help adjust your cloud spending to match your budget and needs, making for better cost optimization.
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Expert engineers
When you partner with a cloud managed services provider, you should be gaining a team of expert, certified engineers who have access to the latest technologies and are up-to-date on the latest best practices. Compared to your internal team, the provider’s team focuses on the cloud, so you know you’re working with knowledgeable engineers that can consult with you and help you meet your goals.
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Cloud vendor knowledge
Your cloud managed services team is familiar with your cloud vendor. They should be able to help you take advantage of key features of your cloud vendor, as well as interface with the vendor if necessary.
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Prevent Downtime
Because cloud managed services work to identify and solve system issues before they become a major problem, your environment should be safer from downtime than ever before. Cloud managed service providers monitor your environment in order to detect and fix any potential network issue. Quick to respond with their expertise, you’ll limit costly downtime.
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Deal with Increasing Complexity
According to Gartner, major public cloud providers release 40 to 50 features per month. Sifting through features and determining what features benefit your company and which do not is not an easy task to keep up with. As cloud computing continues to grow, the cloud will continue to get more complex. Having a partner on your side that specializes in cloud managed services can help you not only get the most from your cloud environment but also help you adjust and change, as well as implement new services/features within your environment faster than you could on your own.
So what are cloud managed services? In summary, cloud managed services are an important consideration for any organization who has a cloud environment or is looking to migrate to the cloud. Leaving cloud management to the experts can actually save you more time and effort in the long run.
As the cloud continues to grow in popularity, having a partner that knows the ins and outs of your cloud provider can help you reap all of the benefits of the cloud — and there are many to be had! WSM is a cloud managed services provider that can help you do that. Learn more about our fully managed cloud services here.
